Beginning the School Year with Collaborative Inquiry

According to John Hattie (2015), “the largest barrier to student learning is within-school variability” (p. 1). He recommends that what works best in education is empowering schools to leverage the collaborative expertise of the educators within a building. If often tell teams that I work with that if we had the answer, then we would have implemented it already. However, education faces complex issues today.

Therefore, MNPS’ Collaborative Inquiry process, developed by the MNPS Community of Practice (Haynes Middle, Margaret Allen Middle, Two Rivers Middle, West End Middle, and Wright Middle), is about empowering MNPS educators to use data and educator expertise for addressing a variety of complex issues in order to ensure all MNPS students are successful.

I am excited to share that three schools started the 2017-2018 school year off by engaging in collaborative inquiry to have deep conversations about a variety of topics.

Mr. Todd Irving, also being new to Joelton Middle, wanted to leverage educator expertise to develop new vision and mission statements for the 2017-2018 school year. On Friday, July 28th, Joelton Middle’s leadership team convened and used the collaborative inquiry process to develop vision and mission statements. To read about their collaborative inquiry journey, click http://www.mnpscollaboration.org/joelton-middle-vision-and-mission.html

If you have a collaborative inquiry story to share and/or need support with the collaborative inquiry process, please feel free to contact…

References:Hattie, J. (2015). What works best in education: The politics of collaborative expertise. London, UK: Pearson.

On February 9, 2017, Two Rivers Middle leadership team began the journey of developing their SIP goals for 2017-2018, which will be used to guide their budgeting. After that meeting, two more meetings were held. The next meeting occurred on February 23, 2017 to develop draft SIP goals. The final meeting was held on March 9, 2017 to solicit feedback and finalize the 2017-2018 SIP goals. The collaborative inquiry process was used to facilitate each meeting.

East Nashville Magnet Middle Prep also used the collaborative inquiry process for developing their SIP goals. However, they took a different approach by first having common planning time teams make data observations. The East Nashville Magnet Middle leadership team then used the observations to develop SIP goals for 2017-2018. Again, the SIP will be informing the budgeting process at East. Read more about East Nashville Magnet Middle's journey HERE.

One great thing about the collaborative inquiry process is the fact that it can be used in different contexts and different ways to support schools. If you want to learn more about the collaborative inquiry process or have a great example to share with us, please contact Margie Johnson at margie.johnson@mnps.org.